Alan Moore on Superheroes, Comicsgate, and Donald Trump

What follows is an excerpt from Alan Moore's 10-26-24 GUARDIAN article entitled "Fandom Has Toxified the World":

Never having sought a pop celebrity relationship with readers, I withdrew by stages from the social side of comics, acquiring my standing as a furious, unfathomable hermit in the process. And when I looked back, after an internet and some few decades, fandom was a very different animal.

An older animal for one thing, with a median age in its late 40s, fed, presumably, by a nostalgia that its energetic predecessor was too young to suffer from. And while the vulgar comic story was originally proffered solely to the working classes, soaring retail prices had precluded any audience save the more affluent; had gentrified a previously bustling and lively cultural slum neighbourhood. This boost in fandom’s age and status possibly explains its current sense of privilege, its tendency to carp and cavil rather than contribute or create. I speak only of comics fandom here, but have gained the impression that this reflexive belligerence – most usually from middle-aged white male conservatives – is now a part of many fan communities. My 14-year-old grandson tells me older Pokémon aficionados can display the same febrile disgruntlement. Is this a case of those unwilling to outgrow childhood enthusiasms, possibly because these anchor them to happier and less complex times, who now feel they should be sole arbiters of their pursuit?

There are, of course, entirely benign fandoms, networks of cooperative individuals who quite like the same thing, can chat with others sharing the same pastime and, importantly, provide support for one another in difficult times. These healthy subcultures, however, are less likely to impact on society in the same way that the more strident and presumptuous fandoms have managed. Unnervingly rapidly, our culture has become a fan-based landscape that the rest of us are merely living in. Our entertainments may be cancelled prematurely through an adverse fan reaction, and we may endure largely misogynist crusades such as Gamergate or Comicsgate from those who think “gate” means “conspiracy”, and that Nixon’s disgrace was predicated on a plot involving water, but this is hardly the full extent to which fan attitudes have toxified the world surrounding us, most obviously in our politics.

Elections that decide the fate of millions are conducted in an atmosphere more suited to evictions on I’m a Celebrity …, in which contestants who are insufficiently amusing are removed from office. Saleability, not substance, is the issue. Those who vote for Donald Trump or Boris Johnson seem less moved by policy or prior accomplishment than by how much they’ve enjoyed the performances on The Apprentice or Have I Got News for You.

To read Moore's entire article, click HERE.

Bernie Mireault, R.I.P. (1961-2024)

 

From Zach Rabiroff's 10-21-24 COMICS JOURNAL obituary for Bernie Mireault, creator of THE JAM and the artist of such important graphic novels as GRENDEL: THE DEVIL INSIDE (written by Matt Wagner):

It is bittersweet that as quintessential an outsider in comics as Bernie Mireault should be so widely and sincerely mourned. Mireault’s work had always projected the passionate fascination of someone standing just outside the comics mainstream without ever totally entering it. The Jam, Mireault’s magnum opus and the work which occupied the better portion of his career, was like an outsider art interpretation of Jack Kirby – Marvel Comics by way of a prodigiously talented cargo cult. Mireault, to be sure, was never the sort of artist likely to make the front of a Previews catalog, but it is wholly possible to imagine the sort of alternate world where he might have been, and where anyone with verve, talent and tenacity for the art form might do the same.

That this future, and all of Mireault’s futures, are confined to the realm of the hypothetical is now a tragic fact. On Sept. 2, 2024, Bernie Mireault died at age 64. His death, announced in a Facebook post by his lifelong friend and fellow comics artist Howard Chackowicz, revealed the cause to be suicide. The flood of remembrances was immediate and heartfelt: from collaborators, publishers, and colleagues who knew him; from elder industry statesmen like Paul Levitz who didn't; from fans, stunned and saddened by the loss of an artist most of them — of us — had long taken for granted. It was, in a real and ironic sense, as close to the center of the comics field that Mireault and his work had ever been.

To read the entire obituary, click HERE. 

In December of 2022, Mireault's work was featured on Ed Piskor and Jim Rugg’s CARTOONIST KAYFABE YouTube show:

CARTOONIST KAYFABE:

 Realistic Superhero? The JAM by Bernie Mireault:

The Cure For What Ails You: A Seven-Percent-Solution of TEMDH!

I have a sneaking suspicion that you've spent a great deal of time during the past two weeks ruminating over the devastating effects of disinformation far more than usual. Synchronistically, an anonymous team of mystically attuned minds have now published an entire tome that analyzes the very subject of disinformation from every philosophical angle possible, and the name of said grimoire is... THE EXPECTANT MOTHER DISINFORMATION HANDBOOK! 

The committee of advanced scholars who composed this tome can, with utter honesty, offer you an ironclad guarantee that reading this weird book will NOT reverse the effects of the past two weeks in any appreciable way. In fact, plowing through the 400 pages of this HANDBOOK will no doubt amount to nothing more than an extraordinary waste of what little energy you have left. Nonetheless, peals of existential laughter might be the only true balm in a world of increasing madness. If the tintinnabulation of unhinged cackles drifting down the labyrinthine corridors of Ward Eleven seem like a welcome respite compared to staring off into space in complete and utter despair, you might want to give a seven-percent-solution of TEMDH a fighting chance. 

The dutiful wardens at Madness Heart Press thank you for your time and attention. 

Col. L. Fletcher Prouty on The Secret Team

What follows is David Ratcliffe's historically important interview with Col. L. Fletcher Prouty (author of THE SECRET TEAM and JFK:  THE CIA, VIETNAM, AND THE PLOT TO ASSASSINATE JOHN F. KENNEDY), conducted on May 6, 1989, regarding the intelligence milieu that ultimately led to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. I highly recommend listening to all four parts:

Col. L Fletcher Prouty: Secret Team - The Formation & Purpose of The NSC - PT 1 of 4

Col. L Fletcher Prouty: Secret Team - The CIA's Origins Of Covert Operations - PT 2 of 4

Col. L Fletcher Prouty: Secret Team - Covert Operations & Their Consequences - PT 3 of 4

 

Col. L Fletcher Prouty: Secret Team - Conclusion - PT 4 of 4

Tony "Doc" Shiels, R.I.P. (1938-2024)

I only recently found out about the passing of Tony "Doc" Shiels. In February of 2013, I posted a "Top Ten" list of important Fortean books, one of which was Shiels' 1990 memoir, MONSTRUM!: A WIZARD'S TALE. You can see the entire list right HERE.

What follows is a brief excerpt from Charles Darwent's 7-30-24 GUARDIAN obituary for Shiels: 

In May 1977, Shiels, who has died at 86, was standing below Urquhart Castle on Loch Ness in the Scottish highlands when a creature appeared in the water. It was, Shiels said, glossy and muscular. He managed to take two colour photographs of it, the clearest pictures of the Loch Ness monster then available.

The world of Nessology erupted. But excitement gave way to annoyance when Shiels hinted that the shot had been staged, using a Plasticine model he had made. The subject of his photos was now dubbed “the Loch Ness muppet”. That Shiels later recanted his recantation cut no ice. Monster-spotters had a sense of having been toyed with.

Shiels was unrepentant. He was an artist, and the role of the artist was to bring pleasure. This he had undoubtedly done. A Plasticine monster was no more fake than a painting: hoaxing was in the eye of the beholder. Seen in this way, Shiels’s work was a piece of performance art [...].

Whether you believed in Shiels’ magic was neither here nor there. He remained, at heart, a Surrealist, his showmanship akin to that of Salvador Dalí, his necromantic beard a variant of Dalí’s waxed moustache. This was not understood by his Cornish neighbour, the painter and occultist Ithell Colquhoun. “I told her that I was a charlatan and she denied it,” Shiels cheerily recalled. “‘Oh no,’ she said. ‘You have real powers’, and all that nonsense. I said ‘no more than anyone else, my dear’.”

All this overshadowed his importance as a painter. Shiels had arrived in Cornwall a fully fledged French abstractionist. By 1963, he had reintroduced the figure to his work in canvases such as Four Frightened Bathers. Artists including Roger Hilton took note, and followed suit. Shiels’ influence was acknowledged in an exhibition called Creative Tensions, held in Penzance in 2019 to celebrate the 70th anniversary of the Penwith Society.

If you want to read the entire obituary, click HERE. 

You can watch MAKING MARKS, Ben MacGregor's award-winning short documentary about the life and work of Shiels, by clicking HERE.

MAGA MONTAGE

From Evan Perez, Zachary Cohen, Holmes Lybrand and Kristen Holmes' 11-15-24 CNN article entitled "Trump’s Team Skips FBI Background Checks for Some Cabinet Picks":

President-elect Donald Trump’s transition team is bypassing traditional FBI background checks for at least some of his Cabinet picks while using private companies to conduct vetting of potential candidates for administration jobs, people close to the transition planning say.

Trump and his allies believe the FBI system is slow and plagued with issues that could stymie the president-elect’s plan to quickly begin the work of implementing his agenda, people briefed on the plans said. Critics say the intrusive background checks sometimes turn up embarrassing information used to inflict political damage.

The discussions come as Trump has floated several controversial choices for high-level positions in the US government – including Matt Gaetz for attorney general and Tulsi Gabbard for director of national intelligence.

Ultimately, the president has the final authority on who he nominates and decides to share intelligence with, regardless of the established protocol set in the wake of World War II to make sure those selections don’t have unknown foreign ties or other issues that could raise national security concerns.

But circumventing background checks would be bucking a long-established norm in Washington. It also reflects Trump’s deep mistrust of the national security establishment, which he derides as the Deep State. Sources say he has privately questioned the need for law enforcement background checks.

Dan Meyer, a national security attorney in Washington, DC, said the incoming Trump administration “doesn’t want harmony.” They “don’t want the FBI to coordinate a norm; they want to hammer the norm,” he said.

To read the entire article, click HERE. 

From Luke Broadwater's 11-15-24 NEW YORK TIMES article entitled "Johnson Says He Will Object to Release of Ethics Report on Gaetz":

Speaker Mike Johnson on Friday said he planned to object to the release of a damaging bipartisan investigative report on the conduct of former Representative Matt Gaetz, the Florida Republican whom President-elect Donald J. Trump wants to be attorney general.

Mr. Johnson said it would be a “terrible breach of protocol” for the House Ethics Committee, which investigated Mr. Gaetz over sexual misconduct, illicit drug use and other allegations, to make public its findings because Mr. Gaetz is no longer a member of Congress.

Mr. Gaetz abruptly resigned this week after being tapped by Mr. Trump, effectively ending the investigation just days before the committee had planned to vote on releasing its conclusions.

“I’m going to strongly request that the Ethics Committee not issue the report,” Mr. Johnson told reporters on Friday at the Capitol, adding that he would contact the chairman of the panel, Representative Michael Guest, Republican of Mississippi, to make his wishes known. 

To read the entire article, click HERE.

From Richard Rubenstein's 11-15-24 COUNTERPUNCH article entitled "'It’s the System, Stupid!' The Underlying Causes of Trump's Victory":

In 2016 Steve Bannon told Donald Trump that if he played his cards right, he could become “the Roosevelt of the Right.” That is, he could create a coalition of ultra-wealthy capitalists, small entrepreneurs, and discontented workers and bind them together under the flag of cultural nationalism. The key to doing this was to campaign against “the System” – not the system of capitalist oligarchy, of course, but the structures of administrative regulation, relatively free trade, and military commitments abroad that defined what Trump and Bannon called the “Deep State.” The key to their electoral success was to cast MAGA as the movement of systemic change and the Democrats as the party of the status quo – a trap into which the supporters of Biden and Harris easily fell [...].

[T]he problem is not that liberals fight for the rights and interests of historically oppressed groups. It is that, by accepting the zero-sum rules of the existing oligarchical system, they declare less oppressed groups to be “privileged” and lump them in with elite oppressors. Not surprisingly, this threatens and alienates groups that are only relatively privileged, and who are actually potential allies against the oligarchy and its political camp followers [...].

[T]o be white rather than Black, male rather than female, straight rather than gay, gives straight white males only relative advantages over the members of more oppressed groups. It clearly does not relieve them of oppression by far more powerful elites. In fact, their relative superiority over other groups is part of a sleazy divide-and-conquer game used by those with oligarchical power to keep them in line [...].

What is vicious about this is not merely that elite power makes a farce of democracy, but also that it continually generates solution-less problems. Thus, we export weapons of destruction as if there were no possibility of converting military production into a program to produce goods and services to satisfy basic human needs. We fight over immigration as if there were no such thing as a planned economy capable of remedying our labor shortage without lowering wage rates and bankrupting social services. And we choose sides in disputes between relatively oppressed and less oppressed identity groups as if there were no way to reduce competition between them for unnecessarily scarce resources and economic opportunities.

What James Carville might say, if he understood the situation better, is “It’s the system, stupid!” If we do not recognize that it is the system of capitalist oligarchy and its political servants that limit the possibilities of conflict resolution and generate most of this discontent, we will keep fighting unnecessary battles that Democrats are unlikely to win against a movement that claims (however falsely) to be anti-system.

To read the entire article, click HERE. 

From Mark Daniell's 11-15-24 TORONTO SUN article entitled "Sylvester Stallone Hails Donald Trump as 'Second George Washington,' Compares President to Rocky":

Sylvester Stallone praised President-elect Donald Trump and hailed him as the “second George Washington” at a speech Thursday night in Palm Beach, Fla. [...].

“We’re in the presence of a really mythical character,” Stallone said to a roomful of cheers in a video shared on X by C-SPAN. “I love mythology. And this individual does not exist on this planet. Nobody in the world could have pulled off what he pulled off, so I’m in awe.”

He also likened Trump to Jesus and his boxer character Rocky telling the crowd his screen creation was “a chosen person … Something was going to happen. This man was going to go through a metamorphosis and change lives, just like President Trump.”

He continued on by celebrating Trump as a commander-in-chief akin to America’s first president George Washington, whose leadership altered the course of U.S. history.

“When George Washington defended his country, he had no idea that he was gonna change the world. Because without him, you could imagine what the world would look like. Guess what? We got the second George Washington” [...].

Back in 2021, Stallone shut down QAnon followers, after some of the adherents believed the actor was signaling the group when he posted a photo of himself sporting a cap with the letter “Q” alongside the caption: “Heading into the Storm…”

“For those incredibly inquisitive individuals, let me state unequivocally that the Q on this hat stands for Quantum of Solace, the name of the boat I was on, not anything else, OK?” he wrote on Instagram.

“Relax…So folks, the moral of the story is…enjoy your lives and let other people enjoy theirs…So keep punching.”

One of the central beliefs of the followers of the anonymous prophet named “Q” is that a cabal of Satanic, cannibalistic pedophiles operate a global child sex trafficking ring and conspired against Trump during his term in office.

To read the entire article, click HERE.

From Colleen Long and Dan Merica's 11-12-24 PBS article entitled "What Trump Has Said He Will Do on Day 1":

Donald Trump has said he wouldn’t be a dictator — “except for Day 1.” According to his own statements, he’s got a lot to do on that first day in the White House.

His list includes starting up the mass deportation of migrants, rolling back Biden administration policies on education, reshaping the federal government by firing potentially thousands of federal employees he believes are secretly working against him, and pardoning people who were arrested for their role in the riot at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

“I want to close the border, and I want to drill, drill, drill,” he said of his Day 1 plans.

When he took office in 2017, he had a long list, too, including immediately renegotiating trade deals, deporting migrants and putting in place measures to root out government corruption. Those things didn’t happen all at once.

How many executive orders in the first week? “There will be tens of them. I can assure you of that,” Trump’s national press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, told Fox News on Sunday.

Here’s a look at what Trump has said he will do in his second term and whether he can do it the moment he steps into the White House...

To read the entire article, click HERE. 

From Peter Savodnik's 11-6-24 FREE PRESS article entitled "'We Blew It, Joe!'":

[I]n the midst of shedding its loyalty to the working and middle classes, the [Democratic Party] has transformed itself into a corporatized, single-cell organism. It no longer appears to represent a true coalition of interest groups—the way parties normally do. It is made up of platform surfers building their social media audiences on the backs of the very people they claim to bleed for: marginalized peoples, birthing people, Gazans, whoever.

They didn’t lose because they didn’t spend enough money. They didn’t lose because they failed to trot out enough celebrity influencers. They lost because they were consumed by their own self-flattery, their own sense of self-importance. They should have spent the past eight years learning from the Republicans’ very honest, if flawed, conversation about the plight of America. But they insisted on talking to themselves about the things that made them feel morally superior.

To read the entire article, click HERE. 

From Leo Sands' 11-5-24 WASHINGTON POST article entitled "Elon Musk Promotes Video Referencing QAnon in Support of Trump":

Elon Musk shared a video in support of Donald Trump that appeared to include references to the extremist QAnon ideology and footage from the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol, elevating the radicalized movement on the evening before millions of American voters cast their ballots on Election Day.

The billionaire owner of X has become one of Trump’s most vocal backers in the closing weeks of the campaign, and he has shared a blizzard of misinformation about the integrity of the U.S. electoral system. Musk has frequently appeared at campaign rallies alongside the Republican nominee, while giving over $118.5 million to his own pro-Trump group.

The one-minute video, a mashup of campaign footage and archival video set to audio of Donald Trump speaking, features the letters “PATRIQTS” flickering on-screen and phrases used online by QAnon devotees [...].

The video, which was already circulating online before Musk amplified it on the eve of Election Day, also included what appeared to be imagery from the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection, when pro-Trump rioters laid siege to the U.S. Capitol in support of his baseless claims that the 2020 election was rigged.

According to X’s own metrics, the video had garnered more than 23 million views by the early hours of Election Day [...].

Musk has boosted far-right memes and bogus theories in the past, winking to QAnon prophesies [...].

Far-right activists and conspiracy theorists have spent the years since the last presidential election shoring up an online infrastructure to spread false claims about election fraud — an effort supported by Musk in the run-up to Election Day.

In that period, American voters have grappled with an avalanche of misleading claims about nearly every aspect of their lives — from health care and education to immigration and the weather.

To read the entire article, click HERE. 

From 10-28-24 DAILY DOT article entitled "QAnon Crowd Explodes After Trump Says He and Matt Gaetz Have a ‘Little Secret’ That Will Swing the Election":

QAnon supporters are convinced that their wildest fantasies will soon come true after former President Donald Trump alluded to a “little secret” during his rally at New York City’s Madison Square Garden on Sunday.

Shadow of Ezra, a prominent QAnon promoter on X, highlighted the remark the following day before asking his more than 543,000 followers to guess what the secret was.

“Donald Trump teased that he and Matt Gaetz share a ‘little secret’ that’s set to give Republicans an edge, saying, ‘Our secret is making waves… We’ll reveal it once the race is won.’ What’s the secret?” wrote Shadow of Ezra.

Conspiracy theories flooded the replies, many revolving around the core QAnon belief that Trump will jail and execute all of his political enemies once power has been regained.

“They’ve been running a sting operation for the last 8 years and the hammer comes down after Trump wins,” the user RedPillPatriot said.

“The reveal is going to be filled with perp walks,” another added.

To read the entire article, click HERE.

From Molly Olmstead's 7-29-24 SLATE article entitled "QAnon’s Victims":

According to some estimates, tens of millions of Americans have bought into QAnon, whether they know it or not: A 2021 poll from the Public Religion Research Institute found that roughly 30 million Americans believed “a group of Satan-worshiping pedophiles who run a global child sex trafficking operation” control “the government, media, and financial worlds in the U.S.” That number grew slightly in 2022, making QAnon as popular as some religions.

We are still in the process of understanding just how much the movement has poisoned our politics. We are still learning the ways in which the beliefs born from an internet movement have reshaped the ways Americans interact with the information they encounter. We are still struggling to understand the disastrous repercussions this movement had in contributing to a mass death event in a global pandemic. But there’s another legacy of QAnon that can be equally hard to account for: the countless private tragedies of loved ones becoming paranoid, obsessive, cruel, and unrecognizable [...].

This is the specific epidemic investigative reporter Jesselyn Cook tackled with her new book, The Quiet Damage [...]. Slate spoke with Cook to understand what we can learn from these private stories of damaged lives; how we can better understand the appeal of conspiratorial thinking at a human level; and about who is most at risk of falling victim to it [...].

SLATE: After Trump lost the 2020 election and the promises of a “Storm” didn’t materialize, Q got a lot quieter. There haven’t been any Q drops in a couple years now. You wrote a book about the grip of QAnon on people’s lives—what about now? How do you still see it as relevant?

COOK: Honestly, these days, QAnon has really just blended into the mainstream. I wouldn’t even think of it as a specific movement, or as just people who identify as QAnon followers. It’s a broader populace that subscribes to these views, even without using the label. The QAnon fixation on pedophilia and child trafficking is a serious and very real issue: We’ve seen it distorted and weaponized into something where calling someone a pedophile has become a go-to political attack for some of our elected leaders.

And with the election around the corner, and especially with all the unprecedented events that have occurred in the past month, disinformation is just blowing up, out of control. Q may be gone for now. And while QAnon, officially, as a movement, has gone underground, the damage is done. We see it every single day. I mean, even just on Twitter last night, I opened the app, and one of the main curated stories by the platform was about how Biden was on his deathbed. There was one suggesting that he had been cloned, or Kamala had killed him. It’s no wonder this stuff has become so widely embraced. It’s so normalized.

To read the entire article, click HERE.

Investigation Alien

From John Anderson's 11-7-24 WASHINGTON POST article entitled "'Investigation Alien' Review: Extraterrestrial Extrapolations on Netflix":

George Knapp, the scrappy host of the six-part “Investigation Alien,” could be a false prophet, or a stealth evangelist, but his strong suit is a serious career in journalism—his Peabody and Edward R. Murrow awards, a lengthy tenure in Las Vegas TV news and a clinical approach to the evidence. He is not a crackpot, which is how the doubters—or the fearful—traditionally try to write off the true believers in other-than-Earthly life. Mr. Knapp has explored the subject long enough to be convinced that we are not alone in the universe, though he seems open to other explanations.

Visiting various locations around the world where inexplicable phenomena have been occurring for decades, Mr. Knapp and his cohort interview survivors of what they describe as UFO attacks (some dating back a considerable number of years); witnesses to unexplained objects darting through the sky and disappearing into the ocean (thus becoming USOs, or Unidentified Submerged Objects); and sources that would seem unimpeachable, if only because they are putting their professional reputations on the line.

To read the entire article, click HERE.

Investigation Alien | Official Trailer | Netflix

UFO MONTAGE

From Amanda Kooser's 11-14-24 FORBES article entitled: "Congressional UFO Hearing Features Eye-Opening UAP Claims":

There was a very X-Files vibe to a congressional hearing into unidentified anomalous phenomena on Wednesday. Witness testimony included eyebrow-raising claims about the existence of UAPs and alien technology on Earth. The hearing was focused on testimony with little substantive evidence behind some of the more extraordinary claims.

The House Oversight Committee joint subcommittee hearing was called “Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena: Exposing the Truth.” The hearing aimed “to further pull back the curtain on secret UAP research programs conducted by the United States government, and undisclosed findings they have yielded.” The four witnesses were retired U.S. Navy Rear Admiral Tim Gallaudet, former Department of Defense official Luis Elizondo, NASA UAP independent study team member Michael Gold and journalist Michael Shellenberger.

To read the entire article, click HERE.

From Kase Wickman's 11-14-24 VANITY FAIR article entitled "Lauren Boebert Told Congress She Is Worried About Space Aliens Operating From Underwater 'Bases'":

Colorado Republican Rep. Lauren Boebert is at it again. No, we don’t mean vaping and getting handsy in the audience of the touring production of a Broadway musical about ghosts who are up to no good—this time, at least. On Wednesday, Boebert put in an honest day’s work in D.C. questioning UFO experts about the existence of secret underwater alien bases and the veracity of “rumors that have come up to the Hill" about government experiments creating “hybrid” humans with enhanced capabilities.

To read the entire article, click HERE.

From the GUARDIAN'S 11-15-24 article entitled "Latest Pentagon Report Reveals Hundreds of New UFO Sightings":

The Pentagon’s latest report on UFOs has revealed hundreds of new sightings of unidentified and unexplained aerial phenomena but no indications suggesting an extraterrestrial origin.

The review includes hundreds of cases of misidentified balloons, birds and satellites as well as some that defy easy explanation, such as a near-miss between a commercial airliner and a mysterious object off the coast of New York.

While it isn’t likely to settle any debates over the existence of alien life, the report reflects heightened public interest in the topic and the government’s efforts to provide some answers. Its publication comes a day after House lawmakers called for greater government transparency during a hearing on unidentified anomalous phenomena, or UAPs – the government’s preferred term for UFOs.

To read the entire article, click HERE.

From Jeffrey Kluger's 11-15-24 TIME article entitled "Inside Capitol Hill’s Latest UFO Hearings":

What caused both the lawmakers and the witnesses at the hearing particular concern is not just the fact that the sightings keep occurring, but where they’re occurring—with a disproportionate share of them happening over military or other secure installations. Committee chairman Glenn Grothman (R-Wis.) put the question directly to Elizondo.

“I suppose, hypothetically, you could have incursions over just regular airports,” he said, “but is it obvious that these incursions are more likely over military facilities than over a random airport?”

“There is definitely enough data to suggest that there is some sort of relationship between sensitive U.S. military installations, also some of our nuclear equities, and some of our Department of Energy sites,” Elizondo answered. “This is not a new trend; this has been going on for decades and that information has been obfuscated, unfortunately, from folks like you in this committee, and I think that’s problematic.”

Elizondo was not the only witness to charge that the government is playing cute with what it knows or doesn’t know about the origin of UAPs. Retired rear admiral Tim Gallaudet was deployed off the east coast of the continental U.S. in Jan. 2015 when one of the cockpit videos that was declassified in 2020 was first captured. According to his testimony, he and a handful of other Naval officers received an email with the video attached—an email that vanished from all of their inboxes “without explanation” the next day. The anomalous object, he said, exhibited “flight and structural characteristics unlike anything in our arsenal.” For Gallaudet, the content of the video, not to mention its disappearance, served as “confirmation that UAPs are interacting with humanity.”

To read the entire article, click HERE.

PINOCCHIO ENDORSES THE EXPECTANT MOTHER DISINFORMATION HANDBOOK!

There I was, strolling past Mr. Toad's Wild Ride, just minding my own business, when this wooden street urchin named Pinocchio rushed up to me out of nowhere, tapped me on the shoulder, and said in a disturbingly high-pitched voice, "I want to help you promote your wonderful new book, THE EXPECTANT MOTHER DISINFORMATION HANDBOOK!" 

"Jesus Christ!" I said, recoiling from this moon-eyed, oversized marionette. After I got over my initial shock, I replied, "Uh, yeah, sure, kid. You can ride my coattails. Why the hell not?" 

So he handed me his personal copy of THE EXPECTANT MOTHER DISINFORMATION HANDBOOK and said, "Hold this up for the camera over there and smile really big for me!" 

"Camera?" I said. "What camera? What the fuck're you talking about, kid?" 

He used his bright white, comically large gloves to point out his personal photographer in the teeming crowd milling through Fantasyland. A human-sized mutant cricket named Jiminy held up a 1950s-style flash camera and snapped a photo of me with my arm around the kid's fragile, bony shoulders. Masking the horror I felt as I watched the spindly, multiple legs of this hideous insect operate the camera, I managed to approximate something resembling a rictus grin during the few moments it took to snap the picture.

Immediately after the dark deed had been completed, Pinocchio turned to me and said, "Oh, I dearly loved your new book simply because it has the word 'mother' in the title. I-I dream about mothers all the time." The words caught in his throat. "I never had a real mother, you see... unless you count the Blue Fairy."

"Blue Fairy?" I said. "What the fuck? Is that like Orange Sunshine? Are you high or something? What's wrong with you, kid?"

Tears brimming in his flying-saucer-sized eyes, Pinocchio held the book out to me with shaking hands and said, "M-may I have your autograph, sir?"

"What the hell?" I shouted. "I don't have time for that crap! You've served your purpose, kid. I don't need you anymore, you pathetic wooden gamin!" I gave him a violent push that knocked him over onto his ass. He clacked like a box of Lincoln Logs as his wooden butt hit the cobblestones. My book went flying into the watery canal surrounding nearby Storybook Land. 

Tears streamed down Pinocchio's whittled face as Jiminy reached down to help him to his feet. After I had walked away a few feet, I turned toward that multi-eyed, radioactive arthropod and said, "You better make sure you send that photo to my PA before midnight or I'll sick my lawyer on your invertebrate ass!" 

Just another day in the Happiest Place on Earth.

A Box O' Expectant Mothers!

Earlier today I received a box overbrimming with copies of my latest work of fiction (or is it fiction?), THE EXPECTANT MOTHER DISINFORMATION HANDBOOK. Yes, this long-rumored mystical grimoire is available for purchase at last. Support your local/nonlocal author! Every sale counts, my friends! To order a copy of THE EXPECTANT MOTHER DISINFORMATION HANDBOOK, visit Amazon by clicking HERE. Of course, if you'd prefer not to prop up a soulless multinational corporation, you can also buy the book directly from Madness Heart Press by clicking right HERE!!!

UNBOXING THE EXPECTANT MOTHER:

ADVANCE PRAISE FOR THE EXPECTANT MOTHER DISINFORMATION HANDBOOK...

"Robert Guffey’s The Expectant Mother Disinformation Handbook is weirder than parthenogenesis, weirder than the Republican Party, weirder than the fetishizing of pregnancy that suffuses our culture, weirder than all the back issues of Weird Tales combined. You will laugh, gasp, and scratch your head in pleasurable bemusement. I can’t recommend this tongue-in-cheek tour de force too highly."

—JAMES MORROW, award-winning author of Only Begotten Daughter and Behold the Ape


"Here it is. THE perfect baby-shower/gender reveal party gift. Forget all the binkies, blankies, cute little onesies, and diaper-service subscriptions. Those are so overdone and boring. Want to make a REAL impact? This book. This book right here [...].

"Well-written, lively, engaging, easy to read, and tons of fun. If I were a truly evil imp with plenty of money, I’d sneak copies into every OB/GYN office and ‘Parenting and Family’ bookstore section in the country."

--CHRISTINE MORGAN, award-winning author of Spermjackers from Hell and Lakehouse Infernal 

 

________________________________________________________

The Expectant Mother Disinformation Handbook is part novel, part fabulist encyclopedia. It’s academic research that’s shockingly close to the truth. The Expectant Mother Disinformation Handbook is a cabinet of wonders disguised as an informational guide for expectant mothers. Backed up with scientific-sounding footnotes from imaginary obstetricians, this book threatens to raise the paranoia of postmodern motherhood to a new level of absurdity.

In the pages of this handbook you will learn about such chimerical illnesses as the Quantum Singularity Syndrome, Symmetrical Child Syndrome, Involuntary Dimensional Transits, Spontaneous Infant Combustion Syndrome, Black Hole Syndrome, Polyinfantalia, Shrinking Brain Syndrome, Muppetitis, Midwich Disease, and Oneirokyesis (known to some pediatricians as “Dream Baby Disease”). But fatal diseases are not the only purview of The Expectant Mother Disinformation Handbook. You’ll find out about the dangers of allowing your fetus in utero internet connection, how to use your child as an assassin, the growing problem of terrorism in the womb, in utero phone sex, the high weirdness of Origami Babies, the little known fact that Shakespeare created pregnancy, the mystery of the fetus-abducting Comprachicos, and a rare in-depth interview with Dracula about his attitudes regarding child raising, among many other illuminating tidbits of obscure but vital historical data.

Ultimately, this book is a scathing satire on the unthinking commercialization of motherhood, fatherhood, and procreation in general.

Election Déjà Vu

"Roratorio" in The Underdogs Rise Vol. 2

My latest story, "Roratorio" (8,600 words), has just been published in THE UNDERDOGS RISE VOL. 2, an all-new anthology of underdog-centric tales edited by J.R. Martin! Buy your copy right HERE!!!

The Underdogs Rise Vol. 2

Born to soar, cursed to walk.
A father's blessing, a son's burden.
How many deaths will it take to truly live again?

Underdog Press presents extraordinary tales where heroes come in all shapes and sizes.

Meet the dream weavers, the flawed champions, and the giant slayers who defy expectations. When the odds are stacked against them, these underdogs will rise, proving that every person has their moment to shine.

Forget cookie-cutter stories. Underdog Press delivers unique voices and unforgettable characters in tales you won't find anywhere else.

Thank you for being a reader who celebrates the power of the underdog!

This is their day. This is their fight.

CARL KOLCHAK VS. CRYPTOPOLIS!

As the sun set on Halloween night, intrepid reporter Carl Kolchak showed up on my doorstep to warn me that my recent collection, CRYPTOPOLIS & OTHER STORIES, had been inhabited by the spirit of an ancient demon known only as "Belphegor"! In order to destroy this iniquitous creature, every copy of CRYPTOPOLIS must be gathered together, bathed in holy water, and set on fire. Of course, to bring about this righteous conflagration, ALL the copies must be purchased first! To save the world, Kolchak is urging you to buy as many copies of this evil tome as soon as humanly possible! DIE, CRYPTOPOLIS, DIE!!!

 

 

At one point during Carl's visit, the anti-matter version of Alice in Wonderland ripped her way through a portal in time and space and tried to abscond with the book, but an ancient incantation uttered in Vulgate Latin solved that problem quickly enough.

 

After the grimoire was dispatched at last, Carl spent the rest of the evening battling other supernatural entities in Southern California. He wrestled with Mothman in a haunted laundry room located somewhere in East Long Beach.

On nearby First Street, Carl dived into the Case of the Cyclopean Skeletons.

 

 

Soon afterwards, the Case of the Newlywed Phantoms was brought to a swift but bloody conclusion.

 

 

In a particularly dangerous interlude, the disembodied head of Jeffrey Epstein attempted to perform unspeakable acts upon Carl, but decisive action involving a vial filled with sanctified holy water blessed by the ghost of Pope John Paul I took care of the infernal revenant soon enough.

 

After stalking the beast-filled streets of the city throughout All Hallows' Eve, Carl kicked up his heels in the haunted Reno Room Bar on East Broadway where he proceeded to exorcise the infamous Ghost Girl with the Bloody Hands, bringing his epic odyssey to a satisfying close.

 

 

ETI Radio 2024 Mahalloween Broadcast!

 Click HERE to listen to the annual EXOTIC TIKI ISLAND Radio Mahalloween Broadcast....

The Cryptoscatology Top 20 Horror Film List (in Reverse Chronological Order...)

Two specific rules dictated the choices on the following cryptoscatological list: 1) There had to be at least one film from each decade, and 2) If you watched all twenty films in a row, the resultant collective film would essentially tell an epic story about The Secret History of the Twentieth Century & Beyond; therefore, I picked movies that shared a consistent theme. If not for those rules, more obvious choices would have been included (e.g., James Whale's THE BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN or Georges Franju’s EYES WITHOUT A FACE). The list below is submitted for your Halloween viewing pleasure...

20. MAD GOD (Phil Tippett, 2021)

 

19. POSSESSOR (Brandon Cronenberg, 2020)

 

18. BLOOD TEA & RED STRING (Christiane Cegavske, 2006)

17. TWIN  PEAKS: FIRE WALK WITH ME (David Lynch, 1992)

 

16. JFK (Oliver Stone, 1991)

 

15. SANTA SANGRE (Alejandro Jodorowsky, 1989)

 

14. SOCIETY (Brian Yuzna, 1989)

 

13. THEY LIVE (John Carpenter, 1988)

 

 

12. HOUSE (Nobuhiko Obayashi, 1977)

 

11. SUSPIRIA (Dario Argento, 1977) 

 

10. THE WICKER MAN (Robin Hardy, 1973)

 

9. WITCHFINDER GENERAL (Michael Reeves, 1968)

 

8. SPIDER BABY (Jack Hill, 1968)

 

 

7. THE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE (John Frankenheimer, 1962) 

 

 

6. INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS (Don Siegel, 1956)

 

 

5. CAT PEOPLE (Jacques Tourneur, 1942)

 

4. THE BLACK CAT (Edgar Ulmer, 1934)

 

3. FREAKS (Tod Browning, 1932)

 

2. VAMPYR (Carl Dreyer, 1932)

 

 

1. HÄXAN (Benjamin Christensen, 1922)